


An Endless Road to Rediscover

by dizzy



Category: Glee RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 15:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2778047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/pseuds/dizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Folklore says that those without souls cannot be loved.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Endless Road to Rediscover

**Author's Note:**

> Tayler, if you tilt your head to the side and squint maybe you’ll see how this relates to the prompt that you requested! I really hope you like it even though it kind of veered away from exactly what you wanted. 
> 
> Thanks to Mav and Sarah for proofing it and Bee for the science-y help!
> 
> (Originally posted [here](http://secretcrisscolferunicorn.tumblr.com/post/104790269042/an-endless-road-to-rediscover).)

Folklore says that those without souls cannot be loved. 

*

Chris never planned on being an icon for the soulless teens of America. It just kind of... happened. He wrote his first book when he was still a teenager himself, and everyone told him write what you know - so that's what he did. He wrote a story about a soulless boy who tried to achieve his dreams despite what society saw as a disability and got struck down in a literal way. 

Not his most subtle move, but it had gone over well with the niche that Chris really wanted to speak to, so he didn't care. Selling two books or two thousand didn't matter to him; if he could make just one soulless kid feel like someone out there was like them, let them know they weren't alone, it was worth it. 

But his second book, about a pair of twins who fall into a strange fantasy world where animals talk and princesses live in castles and where no one has souls at all, caught on in a big way and not just with the soulless. Souled people, mated and those still seeking, read them too, embraced them as a fairytale in a way that, while mostly patronizing, still paid the bills. 

Chris is not above taking money from people that want to give it to him, even if they'd greet him with sympathy, or scorn, if they met him on the sidewalk. 

* 

He's at a signing. He both loves and hates signings. They're the only way to really be able to connect with soulless kids and he loves hearing what his books mean to them. But since the books went mainstream and the movie deal was announced, suddenly there’s just - more. More of every kind wanting a piece of him. 

His agent always tells him to be polite to everyone. That souled are born that way and they can't help that the world they're raised in caters to them. Chris agrees, in theory; his parents and his sister have souls; his mother never loved him any less for it and he realizes he's lucky to be born into a family willing to adapt their mindsets. 

There are plenty of mothers in the world that look at soulless children as incapable of being loved. All that bullshit rhetoric built up through decades of ignorance, systemic oppression and widespread belief that soulless children lack the spark that makes them human. He had to deal with it all through school. Classmates taunted him, others avoided him like they thought it might be contagious. Some teachers bullied him while others went above and beyond to try and prove they were tolerant, which was almost worse to Chris. Hate is blunt, honest and brutal, and easier to fight against. But the people that think they’re being nice, that think they’re doing the right thing when really they look at Chris like he’s just some project that needs their help and pity… that he can’t stand. 

He's spent twenty-four years just wanting to prove to the world that he doesn't need anyone's help and he's not at any kind of disadvantage. He enjoys walking into a store and knowing he has enough money now that the salespeople have to help him. He knows that his books have opened the eyes of many souled people and made them feel a personal connection to the soulless. 

He's told at almost every interview that he's an inspiration, that he's a role model. He’s glad. He really is. 

He’s just waiting for the day that he wakes up and it actually feels real. 

*

Chris meets Darren on a Wednesday afternoon. 

It's a run through for an awards show. A group of soulless performers and activists are being given some kind of televised bullshit placation awards. They'll be forty-five seconds of a two hour presentation, a token gesture to an increasingly vocal minority so the network can act like they actually give a damn. 

But it's worth his time, because he meets Darren. 

He'd heard of Darren Criss before, of course. The soulless singer who doesn't let the fact that he can't technically have a soulmate stop him from writing songs about epic love. The teen magazines include him in all their lists even when they marvel over how he can possibly sing about something he can't feel. 

People call him brave because he’s one of the first of his kind. There were others, but they all revealed themselves later. While they were famous they wore contacts to make their eyes sparkle. That’s the easiest way to identify the soulless; eyes gray with just a hint of the color they would be if they had a soul. 

There are plenty of soulless who try to pass using contacts, and plenty succeed but it’s only a surface fix. Chris’s parents even offered to get him some when he was in school, but he’s never been interested in pretending to be what he isn’t. 

Neither is Darren, and that’s a relief. 

"But it's bullshit," Darren had said to Chris, as they sat in a corner at the afterparty sipping drinks and avoiding everyone else. "That people like you and me are different, sure, I mean, can’t argue that. But that we can't still be in love? Total bullshit. In fact, I think we have it better." 

He'd said it with such conviction, such quiet confidence. "How so?" Chris had asked. 

"Because," Darren said, leaning in and whispering for effect. "Because when we decide we love someone, it's our decision to." 

*

They start hanging out, because they get along and there aren't too many people like them - people that are soulless, in the public eye. They are fighting the same fight and it's easy to bond. 

But even past that, friendship develops. 

They like the same music, like the same movies and have the same sense of humor. Chris hasn’t fallen for someone so fast in a very long time, but when it happens it happens in a grand style. 

And he comes to understand what Darren means when he says love is a choice. Chris wants to be around Darren but it doesn’t hurt to walk away. He basks in Darren’s presence but still feels the warmth in his absence. 

It’s nothing at all like the mated pairs he sees, who have to travel together and have the sickness if they’re too far apart. He revels in the fact that he could love Darren and lose Darren and it wouldn’t mean the horrific transition period that souls losing their mates endure. He is reassured every day that he gets a call, a text, a visit from Darren because it means Darren is making the choice to be with him. 

*

The friendship turns to more quickly and it’s clear that this is something they both want to pursue. Casual touches lead to hand holding, to long hugs at the end of a visit, checking with each other before making plans.

Chris meets Darren’s family, and they are just as warm and embracing and accepting as Chris could ever want anyone in his life to be. Darren meets Chris’s family, and they - well, they try. 

Their first kiss happens on Christmas Eve, after a drowsy booze-soaked party that Darren officially hosted and Chris unofficially co-hosted. He’s getting to know Darren’s tight little circle of soulless friends, the people he met at his college. Darren likes to tell the story of how he managed to flirt his way into the registration office and get a copy of the list of every registered soulless then sent them all the same email inviting them to a karaoke night. 

Sometimes Chris wonders what his life might have been like if he’d grown up like this, surrounded by people who just get him and know what he’s about. 

But his early experiences have made him into the adult that he is, and life isn’t so bad anymore. 

*

“It’s so weird that people assigned all of this meaning to what basically just amounts to a genetic mutation,” Joe is saying, hands flailing around a little. “There is phylogenetic evolutionary evidence out there that indicates that several thousand years ago everyone was born soulless, and the soul itself is the genetic mutation. But because the gene is overwhelmingly dominant, as we all learned in middle school biology, and it spread so rapidly that the mutation overran the wild type. And so history, as over-romanticized as it is, was written as if having this weird find-them-or-die connection to someone is the norm. And now _we're_ the outcasts, when in ancient Athens if you claimed you were magically, monogamously bound to another person, they would have laughed at you and gone right back to their gender-indiscriminant orgies.”

Everyone stares at him. 

He shrugs. “I read, okay?” 

Chris is sitting on the couch with a vodka tonic. Darren is sprawled out with his head in Chris’s lap, occasionally whining when Chris stops petting his hair. 

It’s a mellow evening. Good times with good friends, and good discussion. “Religion,” Chris says. “I mean, that’s what it had to be. People want so badly to believe in a God that predestined them a certain life that they just ignore science.” 

“Or maybe it’s both,” Darren says, always the one in the middle, always the one trying to see things from everyone’s side. “Maybe there is a god and he did pick that for certain people. But for other people, like us… for some reason we just get a different destiny.” 

“In that case,” Brian says, “I’d like to have words with him. Out of work actor and part time bartender doesn’t sound nearly as good as my soulmate being some loaded cougar.” 

“You wish,” Darren says. “You’d probably end up with Joey as your ‘mate anyway.” 

“Can’t get rid of me,” Joey says, grinning and plopping his feet into Brian’s lap. 

The conversation carries on, but Chris is smiling down at Darren. 

“What?” Darren asks, quietly and curious. 

“Nothing,” Chris answers, shrugging a little. “I just like you.” 

Darren grins. “Good. I like you, too.” 

*

A famous author and a famous singer, both almost better known for their ‘condition’ than their talents, are bound to make news when they’re finally outed as being together. 

Neither of them expect the backlash. 

Their relationship is made into some raw sexual thing. Darren’s dating history is dragged through the mud, Chris is blasted for using Darren for attention. 

He’s probably asexual, the papers say, because the soulless are just naturally assumed to be incapable of romantic attachment. When they want sex it’s for biological gratification; they simply can’t feel anything more than lust. 

“It’s bullshit,” Chris seethes. 

He’s angry. He’s angry at all the other soulless who are brainwashed from birth into thinking they can’t have what souled people have. He’s furious at the system and the government and the educational system for allowing lies to flourish just because the truth makes them uncomfortable. 

Darren is a calming presence, though. Somehow when he needs to he channels that frantic energy into something amazingly focused and just being near it helps Chris. He leans back into Darren’s arms and sighs. 

“We don’t need them,” Darren says. His arms squeeze tighter around Chris. “Seriously, fuck them all.” 

“Yeah.” Chris closes his eyes and breathes. “Fuck them all.” 

*

Darren puts out another album. He says all the songs are about the boy he loves. 

Chris writes another book. He says it’s dedicated to the man who has his heart. 

Their sales soar. The story changes. 

Public opinion trumps political rhetoric. The same newspapers who said their love was impossible now call them charming. They’re invited around for interviews. 

They’re still an oddity to the industry. Chris is still an icon for what he does and so is Darren; now there’s just another level to it. 

The first time they’re approached by a young boy and girl with eyes the same hint of matte that Chris and Darren both have shyly holding hands, he realizes that this is what means the most. The teenagers thank them and they take photographs and sign the back of a receipt and Chris isn’t the only one with damp eyes when they part ways. 

Once they’ve walked away, Chris turns and kisses Darren right on the mouth in the middle of the street. He doesn’t even care if anyone takes a picture. “You are…” Chris suddenly can’t find the words. 

Darren smiles back, beautiful and perfect and if this is not what love is then Chris doesn’t need love anyway. He just needs Darren. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> [reblog on tumblr](http://alittledizzy.tumblr.com/post/105276467015/an-endless-road-to-rediscover-pg-13-2-1k-a-fic)


End file.
